Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/108

 her skirts against the holy dervish; men of science touch elbows with fever-blooded adventurers; the swarthy Bedouin clicks his dice and calls his points across the café table to his blue-eyed Saxon opponent—for Alexandria is the strainer-rag of creation. She stretches her nets across the corner of three continents, and hauls a catch of motley fish—Copt and Kurd and Sudani, Scandinavian, Greek, and Scot—the flotsam of the Occident, the scum of the Orient. Tides of the East and tides of the West here mingle and fret in picturesque confusion. Every derelict drifts to Alexandria, for Alexandria is the strainer-rag of creation.

Somewhat retired from this skirmish line of cafés, with a broader waste of sand between its striped awnings and the sea-wall, stands the Grand Hotel Rameses. Here, as in less pretentious quarters, men dine in the open air, looking towards the water and drinking the Mediterranean breeze. The dining space is scarcely more than a booth, built on the level sands adjoining the hotel. But it is a very wide booth, a pavilion. A partition, the height of a man's waist, supports the framework for an awning which flaps and shivers in the wind. Those who pass and those who sit within, each may see the other, the beggar may look at the bey, and the pauper may observe the pacha as he dines. Men lounge in